Responding to Patty Bonds and EWTN

The Dividing Line.

We need Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us. Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And a good evening or almost good morning to you on the East Coast anyways.

This is a special edition of The Dividing Line, a special late night edition for you late night folks,

I guess. Actually the reason for doing it this evening is rather obvious. I head out of town tomorrow afternoon, be gone for the next two

Saturdays and some of you just simply cannot survive without your Dividing Line fix. So instead of having you calling and griping and complaining to poor

Rich here, who is stuck here in the beautiful 70 degree weather here in Phoenix, while I'm going back to 20 degree highs in the

East Coast, we thought we would give you one Dividing Line. It will not be as long as normal.

I don't know how long it's going to be. Sort of when I get done talking is when it gets done as far as the program goes.

But it is a commercial free version of the program this evening.

So we'll get a little bit more material into the same period of time, shall we say.

But anyways, the reason for this evening's program, those of you who have been listening for quite some period of time, know that over the past couple of years, well how long has it been?

I didn't go back and really look personally. But over the past couple of years, we have provided a response whenever statements have been made in public on the part of Mrs.

Patty Bonds, who is my sister, my only sister, six and a half some odd years older than I am.

Sometime last week, as I recall, I heard from one source and then

I heard from another source that there was a program airing on EWTN.

The first few bits of information I got were, well it's something with Patrick Madrid and your sister and things like that.

So I started looking around EWTN. I couldn't really find anything. Nothing came up on the search and things like that.

But slowly in talking to folks, I was able to track down the program,

The Abundant Life, and eventually was able to find the showtimes and was able to watch the program yesterday when it came on noontime here in the

Phoenix area. Basically it was an hour long program, a woman interviewing various guests.

She interviewed first Patrick Madrid because he is the editor of the Surprised by Truth series, which has sold many hundreds of thousands of copies.

Basically these are conversion stories. I've always found it a little bit interesting because I remember back when

Catholic Answers was first starting to really hit the scene back in the 80s, one of the things that I seem to recall was some criticism of the ever -present conversion stories on the part of people who had left the

Roman Catholic Church. Basically the argument was people who leave are not exactly the best sources of information.

Many times they leave for all the wrong reasons and things like that. Really on some levels that's true.

We're not really big into conversion stories ourselves. But then they found out, you know what, they sell well.

Certainly the tapes, for example, Scott Hahn's conversion tape, millions have been distributed over time.

So these books have been coming out. First they introduced and interviewed Patrick Madrid, who

I debated last July on Long Island in regards to the veneration of saints and angels. Then they had an

Anglican priest who, interestingly enough, was a graduate of Bob Jones University, who went to England and became an

Anglican. Then he eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and then my sister came on.

So what we're going to do is I just have a couple of clips. We record the program, respond to a couple of things that were said, make some comments, and that'll do it.

Because tomorrow we head for Hartford, Connecticut. Actually that's just where the airport is anyway. And be speaking on the

Herald Camping, not tomorrow night but the night after that in Connecticut.

And then going to New Hyde Park Baptist Church. We'll be speaking on the atonement. And then probably,

I think, Hillside Baptist Church Sunday morning. Steve Camp and I are going to be doing some stuff together on Long Island.

That's going to be really neat on Saturday evening. And hopefully Sunday, the next week, working together at various churches.

We're going to be at the Massapequa Church of God. I'm not sure if Steve's going to be at that one, but I'm going to be at Massapequa Church of God.

Wednesday night, Thursday night with Ed Moore and the folks at North Shore Baptist Church, Steve Camp and I together.

And then we head off to Tuscarora for a youth retreat on loving

God with the Hope Reform Baptist Church folks, and then come back. So that's what

I'm looking at doing. And all I can say is I'm going to need to try to stay warm while I'm back there because it was,

I don't know what it got up to today, but it was somewhere in the mid -70s. It was very, very nice. Well, anyways, the abundant life, interesting how it started.

Let's listen to how things got started. A wife, mother, and sister of a leading anti -Catholic apologist.

You know, if you've listened, I guess I just need to make the obligatory statement.

Again, no names were used this time. They were on Catholic Answers, but not on EWTN.

And I'm starting to wonder if that's an EWTN thing. I'm really starting to wonder if there in reality is an

EWTN flyer someplace, a memo someplace that says you shall not mention names on the air or something.

Because the EWTN programs, no names are mentioned. Then you go to the other programs and they are.

I'm really not sure what that's all about. But you may recall when she first went on the air, this was the same type of thing.

Anti -Catholic apologists. You know, I've pointed out there's no logic or rationality to this.

We have referred to Catholic apologists, but they simply cannot admit.

I don't know if there's some sort of, somehow undermine the primacy of Rome or something to admit that other people are apologists for what they believe, not just simply against what

Rome is presenting. Why am I an anti -Catholic apologist?

Does that make me an anti -Mormon apologist? I'm debating the Mormons. An anti -homosexual apologist? I'm debating the pro -homosexual groups.

An anti -Muslim apologist? I mean, why can't they just simply use the right terminology?

I don't know, but that's just sort of how that works. That's sort of the obligatory, you know, take a shot at somebody in regards to that particular perspective.

But we continue on from there. Now, this is a longer section. In fact, this is two and a half minutes. Wow. And this is

Pat Madrid discussing with the host the idea of this series of books.

And it's really interesting because he uses an interesting illustration in this next clip of how you try to get your kids to take medicine.

And you stick, you know, the aspirin inside some type of candy type thing, and they take it because they think they're just getting, you know,

I'm watching a Catholic and apologetics say, Wow, you can't do that. Protestants is a non -term.

It means nothing. Oh, it means nothing. Okay, that's brilliant.

Anyways, I think I have to close that window so the nonsense doesn't constantly distract me.

But anyways, I found it interesting. Yeah, you can give your kids aspirin and a little candy type thing.

You can also give them cyanide. I mean, it's one of the two ways. And he's describing these books as, well, you know, you get to know the person, and so you can sort of give good

Catholic apologetics. And, you know, I've looked through these books, folks, and I wrote some fairly lengthy responses.

This is the first one that first came out. There's no good Catholic apologetics in here. There's a lot of lousy Catholic apologetics, but there's not much in the way of good

Catholic apologetics. So, well, you just listen for yourself. About conversion stories particularly that have, in a sense, captured the hearts and the minds of the

Catholic readership. It's a phenomenon that I'm not sure I totally understand.

I mean, I've got some ideas and opinions of what I think. Back in the early 1990s, let's say, by the late 80s, early 90s, there was another phenomenon of conversion stories on tape.

And they were very, very popular. People would put out, you know, sometimes hundreds of thousands of copies of a given testimony,

Scott Hans being a very good example, which is now in the millions. And those single tapes were very powerful.

They changed lives. They brought people closer to the church. And one day I got the idea, why not put that kind of a conversion story, which was heavy and laden with apologetics, why not put that into a book form?

And then the next idea that came was why not do, rather than a single story, why not do multiple stories so that a single volume has got a lot of variety?

And I think the combination of variety and the ability to really see inside somebody's struggle, to see the kinds of things they have to sacrifice, and even antecedent to that, to see some of the prejudices and misunderstandings that they themselves once held, can be very instructive.

And an analogy that I sometimes use to speak to audiences about this whole issue of why these kinds of stories are so effective has to do with when you have a small child who wakes up sick in the middle of the night.

My wife and I have raised quite a few small children, so we know from experience that in the middle of the night, a cranky two -year -old who's got an earache or something does not want to be given medicine.

And you will fight and fuss and try to get the medicine, but if you hide the baby aspirin in a teaspoon of applesauce, then the little baby will eat the applesauce thinking that's all he's getting, but in fact there are two baby aspirin in there with it.

And in a certain sense, the Surprised by Truth books follow that same kind of motif,

I guess, in the sense that people become caught up, they become enthralled in the stories without necessarily realizing that they're also imbibing a very strong dose of Catholic apologetics.

And so by the time they're done with the book, they have not only been educated in the faith, whether they're

Catholic or Protestant or any other religion for that matter, and they've also had their hearts warmed by reading these true conversion stories.

There we go. That was conversion stories. I cut out the S there while creating the thing.

Anyways, well, there you have the illustration. I found it interesting, and, you know, I've taken these conversion stories, the

Jerry Matatick, Scott Hahn's conversion stories, played them in my college classes, and we've taken them apart and examined them, and I don't find anything compelling in these things.

I really, you know, I've mentioned to you before, I remember one summer I was teaching up at Golden Gate, and they have

EWTN radio up there, and I would turn it on and tune these programs in where they have these converts, and it was just the same thing over and over and over again.

And every one of them showed the clearest evidence of never having even attempted to interact with any meaningful response whatsoever.

And certainly for me, it just kept reiterating the exact same thing, that, man, these folks converted out of ignorance of what the other side has to offer.

There are a lot of ignorant Protestants, just like there are a lot of ignorant Catholics. I certainly heard,

I certainly recognize that Catholic apologists will say, hey, a lot of the people who convert are

Roman Catholics. They don't know anything about what the Church teaches. Well, that's true, and there's a lot of Protestants who don't know what their Church teaches either.

Ignorance in conversion, I don't think really means that that conversion story has much in the way of value to it, personally.

I mean, it does for them personally, but I don't think for anybody else, it certainly doesn't have anything that carries along.

But anyways, it was interesting to know, well, these conversion tapes went real well, and they did.

They were all over the place. So let's start the conversion storybooks. And how long will that last?

I don't know. Who knows? You look at the quality of these stories, and eventually, it just gets very, very tiring, because it's just the same thing over and over again.

Well, eventually, my sister came on the program, and the discussion began. Let's listen to the next section.

One of those sermons was that my father viewed the Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon, and that the

Pope would probably eventually be the Antichrist. Now, the reason

I played this particular section, I think I may have lost one section I wanted to play, but anyways, one of the constant elements of this story has been, well, when

I was a young person, my father preached through the book of Revelation, and he said that the Pope was the

Antichrist. Well, anyone who's familiar with almost any church history whatsoever during the period of, say,

Reformation for the next 300 years, sits there and goes, yeah, so?

I mean, even the London Baptist Confession of 1689 has a section that describes the

Pope as the Antichrist. That starts with the

Lollards in England following Wycliffe. So what's new? But did you hear the host?

Let me play it again. Listen to the host sort of commenting, not by saying much, but with the, hmm, ah, type of comment in the background.

One of those sermons was that my father viewed the Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon, and that the

Pope would probably eventually be the Antichrist. Here's the commentary.

There's the commentary right there. And if you watch it, what's going on is, oh, you were so benighted.

You were so blind. And I want to go, excuse me, but could we talk to a few

Catholics about their views of Protestant churches sometime? I mean, at least go this far.

And my mother especially has said that this never happened. But even if, let's leave that aside and say even if it did, so what?

Are we, in essence, what you hear in these conversion stories is, boy, if you had positive beliefs and if they involved saying that Rome was wrong, oh, you were an anti -Catholic.

You were involved in bias and bigotry. What if that was just actually your belief?

And it was a positive belief, and it flowed from, you may notice, and I didn't give you the whole section here, but she's talking about a whole series of sermons out of the book of Revelation.

At least it's based upon trying to do something with the text of Scripture. Most views of Protestants on the part of nominal

Roman Catholics has nothing to do with Scripture at all. It's just whatever the priest said. So which is better, getting out of the book of Revelation, whether you agree with the interpretation or not, or getting it from a priest someplace?

This whole thing about, oh, I was so benighted, I was so prejudiced, and what you want to try to communicate is, you see, you'll never hear them talking about a response.

You'll never hear them talking about the full, bore Protestant response to the things that they're saying.

They stay on a very simple level because, see, that's what's most effective. Very much more effective with the audience they want to attempt to excite and keep excited about Roman Catholicism and things like that.

It's much more effective that way. And that's, I think, what we have going on here. So that's been a real common element of it.

You know, and the funny thing is, nothing's ever said about her anti -Catholic apologist brother on that level because most of you know that when

I preach out of the book of Revelation, it's out of the first five chapters, and it's normally Christological or Ecclesiastical in its orientation because most folks know

I'm not exactly real big on eschatology as yet. And so I sort of, you know, shy away from that.

So anyhow, let's listen to this next clip. Oh, that led you to.

So that led me to. Okay, let me set this up. I normally write these things down. At some point in time, it's very, very interesting here.

My sister sees this St. Patrick's Day parade, and she finds the Confessions of St.

Patrick, and oh, this is what I've been, you know, this is all the stuff that I've been studying and this weird stuff she had gotten into beforehand.

And so now we need to find out about Roman Catholicism. It's been, you know,

I don't expect most folks that listen to this really listen closely enough to find out and go, hmm, that's interesting.

But you would think if you wanted to get some information, that you wouldn't go about it by thrashing around outside of your communion, and then only much later, way down the road, you then ask anybody who's around you.

If you really want truth, you really want information, you're not going to be afraid of where it's going to come from. I mean, you're going to be willing to listen to both sides, and so why not let both sides, including the side you're currently allegedly aligned with, speak?

Well, that's not exactly what happened. Listen. Oh, that led you to... Well, so that led me to trying to find a source of information without getting myself in deep trouble.

Because if I had even told anyone I knew that I was thinking about researching the

Catholic Church, I would have been in deep trouble reputation -wise. So I had to find an outside source, and I found a friend who would be willing to give me some objective information.

Outside source, that's a fellow by the name of David Bjork, by the way. I would hope his nomination has dealt with him now, he's a missionary in France.

How objective that information would be is also extremely highly questionable. But what was this last...

let me replay this last section here. This is... I found this... this is one of the... there wasn't much new in this appearance, but I found this...

Researching the Catholic Church, I would have been in deep trouble reputation -wise. I don't understand that.

Reputation -wise? Uh... I don't understand that. I don't...

with whom? Uh... I don't know. Even when my sister approached me anonymously as a unknown emailer,

I sent her a very full response on the subjects that she raised.

So I certainly would have provided her with an endless amount of information.

And if she hadn't wanted to talk to me, I know some really good folks

I could have gotten her in touch with who would have given her a non -familial perspective on things.

That was a statement I did not understand, could not even begin to follow whatsoever.

That one didn't make any sense whatsoever to me at all. Alright, let's... this one is just about a minute long here.

Let me... I'll go ahead and do what I did before. We'll see what it's about here. What about your parents?

Ah, okay. Here's where we talk... Here's where... and I've mentioned this before. Uh... the big thing now, and it's funny.

I think I may have skipped this section in putting it together. I had 14 different things going on at once.

When you're downloading stuff, installing stuff, putting files together for a trip, and you need to work on editing this book and that material, you know, you can tend to lose things.

And at one point in this interview, the interviewer makes this amazing statement about her having to debate me, which everybody who heard it, there were a number of folks on the channel that were listening on EWTN yesterday, just lost it at that point, because as most folks know who've followed this saga, my email addresses have been blocked.

My AOL instant message access has been blocked. There's no debate going on here.

And when there was interaction, it was very one -sided, and it had the character of, well, you just mentioned what

Augustine said, but have you noted what Augustine said about Pope Zosimus in this particular passage?

Response, Why do you rail against the Church? Well, I'm not railing against the Church. We're talking about Augustine right now.

And did you notice what he said about the primacy of Scripture over here? Oh, you're so fearful and filled with fear and hatred of the

Church. Well, really not. I'm just sort of talking about these things right now. Did you notice this over here? Why do you continue to attack the

Church? It's all this you are so angry stuff, when all you're doing is saying, well,

I just don't accept what you're saying, and here's some factual response. How about that?

Oh, that's terrible. That's been the nature of the whole thing. And so I'm not the one. My email filters don't filter anything from her.

And my AOL instant message, if she wanted to contact me whenever I'm on, she could.

But it doesn't work the other direction around. So here's where she's promoting this stuff. What about your parents and your brother, who is a famous anti -Catholic apologist?

Well, I'd say our relationships are at a standstill. I feel for them, really, because I wish

I could, kind of like the Sacred Heart of Jesus, expose my heart to them and let them see what the

Lord is doing in my life. Their prejudices and their fears keep them from seeing that.

And that manifests itself in anger and alienation, but I know that the background of that is real fear on their part that I've consigned my soul to hell and my children's and my husband's.

And so I feel for them. I ache for them that they're in this turmoil while I enjoy the peace and the bliss of being where I need to be.

I long for them to know that, and I long for them to be here. Well, I can guarantee you there is no fear on my part, because my sister has not certainly in any way, shape, or form shown me anything that I hadn't seen a thousand times before and, in fact, had already dealt with a thousand times before.

But this seems to be the defense mechanism that is utilized so that factual information does not have to be dealt with.

Instead, it's just all the emotional aspects. All along, I have been told that I am cold and heartless because I only want to discuss biblical truth and historical issues rather than emotional issues.

And I'm like, well, I'm obviously in a no -win situation here, aren't

I? I mean, if I talk about biblical and historical issues, that's that I'm cold.

But then it's also said that I'm mean -spirited or fearful and all the rest of these things. It's like, well, wait a minute.

If either direction I go, obviously I'm wrong by definition seems to be the issue here.

And this idea of fearful and things like that has nothing to do with fear at all. Maybe it has something to do with fear for her, but it's certainly not fear of examining anything because I've examined far more of this issue than she has.

That's for certain. So it's an interesting thing to observe the conversion process.

I've made comments in the channel in regards to mannerisms and language and use of terminology that this seems to be a continuing process.

And it goes both ways. I mean, I'm sure that people who look at people who have left the Roman Catholic Church would see similar things, except in reverse, obviously.

But anyhow, just one more quick clip here. Don't forget

Mark Shea's favorite adjective, creepy. Did he use creepy of me? I mean, I've gotten a lot of names and stuff, but creepy is interesting.

This is ridiculous. I wish he was taking live callers. Well, what would you like to talk about,

Mr. Aquinas, sir? He's not going to be here for two weeks. Yes, I'm not going to be here for two weeks.

What I'd like to know is how in the world would you have anything meaningful to say about my response to a conversion story?

I'll wait a second here, because there's a delay before we go. Well, I'll play this last clip, and then during the course of that last clip,

I'd like to see what insights you have to say about that. Let's play this.

This last section is primarily the host of the program. And the host of the program is sort of offering a prayer, shall we say.

Let's pray that that tributary of grace now that has so helped your family start to be softened and to come into the church will just now flow into the life of your parents and into the life of your brother.

Tributary of grace. Well, let's remember that the

Roman Catholic understanding of this is so radically removed from the biblical understanding of this.

Let's remember that this is a grace that tries to save, a grace that cooperates with man's will, but a grace that fails in saving so many.

Unless, as we've seen recently, all these comments may well be irrelevant in the not -too -distant future if the next pope officially enshrines inclusivism as the

Roman Catholic perspective. Who knows? Universalism is right around the corner. Maybe all this will be irrelevant.

But at least the historic Roman Catholic Church and its synergistic view of salvation and the

Council of Florence and its statements about Jews and schismatics and heretics and so on and so forth, those individuals will not receive everlasting life because it is a synergistic, cooperative effort.

It is grace that is dependent upon the power of man rather than grace that saves the elect of God perfectly.

And that grace, the biblical grace, doesn't have quote -unquote tributaries that are in any way, shape, or form controlled by the sacraments of the

Roman Church. I can assure you of that. But anyways, Augustine said that we need to cooperate with it.

That's nice. I'm sort of a biblical -type dude. Let's talk facts and history.

Never claimed Augustine as the authority on that one, and I haven't gotten any answers as to what was so ridiculous.

I've played that whole thing and haven't gotten a single response. That's interesting.

Well, anyways, I say to the host of the program, who, by the way, if you listen to it or watch it, let's put it this way.

She asks Patrick Madrid, and Pat's a pretty level -headed guy. He doesn't get wild and wacky and things like that.

He handles himself real well. He's probably one of the best -spoken Catholic apologists out there. They're starting things off, and he does this long opening thing, and that's always good.

Sort of take control, lay out the foundation. And then you can see her sort of look down at her notes, and she goes,

Now, apologetics is very important to you, isn't it? This guy was vice president of Catholic Answers for like 14 million years.

Well, he's not that old, but you know what I mean. No offense. She says,

Now, apologetics doesn't mean we're apologizing for anything, does it? He tried.

Honestly, he tried. But you could just... I know Patrick Madrid well enough.

You could see this twitch in his face, going, He handled it well.

You've got to give credit where credit is due. No twist about it, but it was sort of funny how he handled that.

I haven't seen anything from Aquinas here. Aquinas is a man in the

Apologetics channel right now who has asserted that he is an official teacher in the church, that he has authority from the bishops and priests to teach officially the

Roman Catholic perspective and was saying beforehand, let me scroll back up here, so I can quote him directly here.

This is ridiculous. I wish he was taking live callers.

This was at 21 .28, which was approximately six minutes ago now. And you've all heard me say, well, what do you want to call about?

And what the world do you have to say? And so far,

I have gotten no response. And so I don't know how long to drag it out as far as him calling in this evening to at least explain to me this evening what is ridiculous about any of the comments that I made.

I don't know how he could have anything to say about that. But we have mentioned, when

I get back from wherever, I'm going to be traveling here for the next little while. I've got San Antonio coming up,

Omaha, so on and so forth. Oh, no, this is a bit unfair. Oh, I see. Okay.

You know, I've debated in Roman Catholic settings where I was the only Protestant there.

Well, I'll take that back. There were two Protestants there. There was an Anglican in the front row, which I'm not sure really counts as a full

Protestant. But all you Anglicans that are conservative out there, don't blow a fuse there.

Just laugh with me. So I've gone to those settings. I'm not really sure what's unfair about this at all.

But anyways, I've mentioned he very much wants to debate me on the subject of the

Apocrypha and on the program. And I said, that's fine.

We'll find a time once I'm back in town long enough to line it up. We'll have him on the program and do that.

But right now, it's, yes, 877 -753 -3341. Don't know what in the world you have to say about tonight's subject.

But there's the number. And let me know, 877 -753 -3341.

Let me know, yes, no, or maybe here as quickly as you can and channel because there's a number just posted for you.

Because if I said something ridiculous, then fine.

Yeah, I did say we'd set up a specific show for us to discuss the Apocrypha. I'm not talking about the

Apocrypha tonight. I'm just quoting you. This is ridiculous. What's ridiculous about it?

That's, you know, if you're going to make that kind of statement, that's, hey, I opened the phone lines up for you.

I'll let you have the opportunity. Well, anyways, so I just provide this brief response.

There wasn't much new in this. And to be honest with you, I just don't know.

Yeah, no thanks. Okay. Oh, well. I wish he was taking live callers until he starts to do so.

Then we don't want to do that. Anyways, there's nothing much new here.

And I don't know how long this is going to last. I really don't. There's, you know,

I think on the Catholic Answers Program, with the admission that I didn't talk to him, I didn't run any, you know, there was admissions of really having major holes as far as knowing really what

I believe. And we've documented all that. There just isn't much farther that this can go.

And, again, I feel sorry for the Roman Catholic apologists who have utilized this story.

We had a guy come into the channel, N -E -R -C. He's from up in Nebraska. I think it means Nebraska Roman Catholic.

Nerk. I'm not sure if he's ever pronounced his nick to know how strange it sounds. But Nerk came into Apologetics, and we would ask questions.

And his response would be, Yeah, well, your sister came home.

Well, that's very interesting. But did you know that Pope Gregory the Great rejected the

Apocryphal Books? Yeah, well, your sister found out what's true. Well, that's very interesting.

But what do you think about Pope Honorius and his teaching of monothelitism as the

Bishop of Rome? Yeah, well, I saw your sister on EWTN. I mean, that's the level of, you know, it just makes you go,

Okay, well, we're not going to get too far with this particular discussion, are we? You know, there's been a little bit of that.

Not as much as I had expected, but there's been a little bit of that. I don't know how much farther it's going to go. But when claims are made, and the one thing that struck me and struck everybody in listening to both conversion stories, and I'll admit, it's an hour -long program you could have gotten into a lot, but they didn't.

There was so little theology. The Anglican who became

Roman Catholic mentioned Roman Catholic claims about apostolic succession, a few things like that. But actually, to really get into the text, do something, say, well,

I discovered that I was wrong about this, or, you know, there was none of that. And as I've listened to conversion stories, unless it's the conversion story of some apologists, you know, people like Robert St.

Genes, who would at least get into some text, but still, it's so surface level. And it demonstrates these folks did not take the time to find out the sources that are out there.

The goods, and the Whitakers, and the Salmons, and the modern writers, like Dr.

Spenson, and Bill Webster, and David King, and the material, it's just like, it didn't exist.

And I get the feeling they don't have any interest in looking now either, which is a very, very, very interesting thing.

Well, anyways, there's a brief response to the Abundant Life program that aired on EWTN.

I would hope that if you're listening on Saturday, you're turning in, and you listen normally on Saturday, Saturday afternoon, that you will pray for us, because this weekend of the normal broadcast,

I'll be ministering Saturday night, Sunday morning, not scheduled Sunday evening right now, but I may actually get an opportunity to just sit in the audience and enjoy listening to Steve Camp sing.

That's going to be great. But Steve Camp and I are going to be doing a bunch of stuff together, and pray for us, pray that the congregations we'll be visiting in will be,

I have nothing to call it right now. Oh, man.

Keep the log of this one. Those of you who are not in channel must wonder at times,

I just played a little pop -up there for everybody who wants to see that. You must wonder what goes on sometimes, but it can be an interesting interaction when you're talking to folks in the channel and seeing what's going on.

But anyways, pray for us as we're ministering back there, and in the projects we have coming up, right now we have a minimum of six debates next year, next year, this year, with two other possibilities sort of bubbling, and that would be an all -time record.

I mean, eight debates in a year would be one every six weeks, as well as trying to teach, and one book, one long chapter, the book with Dave Hunt, I mean, yikes.

We're doing everything we can to keep putting out the best information we can, so pray for us that the

Lord will give us strength and keep our families safe and our health going. That's the most important thing for sure.

So anyways, thank you very much for listening today, and we will not be on for the 25th of January, but Lord willing, oh, wait a minute, uh -oh,

I'm in Omaha, Nebraska. I'll be at about 30 ,000 feet on February 1st, so we need to see.

Now, here's where I will also utilize the channel. There are two folks in channel right now.

In fact, let me scroll down here and see if it's actually three. There's two folks in channel right now, and we can now utilize the pressure of the channel.

There's two folks in the channel. One is using the nick DKLertz, and there's another using the nick

Gobbler, and they know who they are, and they've done the program before, and so I'm going to challenge them to be prepared for February 1st to do a live program here on the dividing line, and we can let them, you know, maybe they'll want to utilize some of the expertise in the channel.

I mean, we have Silly Britt out in the frozen tundra of the

East Coast, and at the very least, he could do, well, hmm, well, he could do things in a funny

British accent, actually. No Brits hosting,

AOMN says. Oh, come on. They're classy. Brits give you a touch of class, you know.

We could have Silly Britt 2 and Silly Britt 1 in channel at the same time talking about the degradation of the

British Chech. How does that sound? And I can't understand half of what they say.

No, that's only when we have the fellow from, the Irish guy call in. That's when we have no idea what anybody is saying.

That's when we do need to have CDS online to translate. Boy, someone's desperate here.

I just got a private message. Hey, I'm in your channel, too. Yeah, so? What am

I supposed to do about that? Anyways, then we have, we could do other things.

We could have MDH on, and he could talk about Windows 2000 issues in regards to Bible programs.

And we could have Julie back on to talk about her experiences running a

Christian web board. And we could have Theo and Monagon on to talk about meeting and getting married in a, well, they didn't get married in a chat channel, which you know what

I mean. And, you know, who knows? Maybe we could even talk Sky Man into being on.

Yeah, right, sure. We could have Cow Poet on. He could do cow poetry for us.

And we can't have Mr. Dave on because he never says anything at all. And we could have Opera Man on to sing.

He could do background music. That would be sort of cool. And we could just have lots of fun.

TGE, he's a brilliant guy. We could have him on to talk about things. And Vitek, there we go,

Vitek, our Polish friend, he's away right now. But he's always cold, so he could tell us how cold it is in Poland and things like that.

So we could have Wonky on to misspell theological terms for us. And there's all sorts of stuff that we could do with everybody in the channel.

So we'll do something on February 1st. You could get, oh, you're yawning because I'm mentioning all the people in the channel?

Well, okay. You could get Aquinas. We could get Aquinas. What, when I'm not on? That's silly. Yeah, we'll have him host the program.

How's that? We'll figure something out. So we'll have something going on February 1st. And I'm definitely back on the 8th and the 15th.

And then I'm in San Antonio on the 22nd. And, by the way, those of you in the

Texas area, the 20th through the 22nd,

I'm doing a seminar on Chosen But Free on Norman Geisler's book. So if you're in that area, you've got some friends who maybe have liked that particular book and would like to hear a response to it, we will be in San Antonio dealing with that issue at that time.

So that does it for the dividing line this evening. Thanks for being with us. Thank you, Aquinas, for the enjoyable time there.

You made some folks very happy anyways. And we will hopefully be back with you live on the 6th of February.